The 'Down Cemetery Road' Trailer Introduces an Explosive Conspiracy

Move over, Slough House, there’s a new Mick Herron-based drama in town. Apple TV+ has released the first trailer for its forthcoming series Down Cemetery Road, which, in many ways, feels like nothing so much as the female-led answer to the streamer’s hit spy series Slow Horses. Based on a different set of Herron novels, The Oxford Investigations Series, the eight-part drama features British acting royalty Emma Thompson (Matilda the Musical) as Zoë Boehm, a disaffected private eye with even fewer resources than the infamous misfits of MI-5. 

The story follows art restorer Sarah Tucker (Ruth Wilson), who enlists Boehm’s help when a young girl disappears following an explosion in a neighborhood home. The investigation sees the duo immediately embroiled in a major conspiracy, which, if the trailer is anything to go by, may include a “massive government cover-up” and puts their lives in danger. 

In an interview with TV Insider, Wilson cites Thompson’s presence as a primary reason she was interested in the show. “As soon as we got together, it was like, OK, this is where the show is. It’s this dynamic, these two women, they’re hilarious. She’s such a good energy on set. She’s so brilliant. She’s kind of playful and easy, and everything is just fun,” she said. “I’ve loved her work for so long, so managing to work alongside her and be with her and find some really quirky dynamic between the two characters was really fun. What we’d built [is] interesting because we’d built our own journeys prior to that. The two characters worked so well. I loved it.”

Here's the series' synopsis:

When a house explodes in a quiet Oxford suburb and a girl disappears in the aftermath, neighbor Sarah Tucker becomes obsessed with finding her and enlists the help of private investigator Zoë Boehm. Zoë and Sarah suddenly find themselves in a complex conspiracy that reveals people long believed dead are still among the living, while the living are fast joining the dead.

Alongside Thompson and Wilson, the all-star ensemble also includes Adeel Akhtar (Les Misérables), Ella Bruccoleri (The Other Bennet Sister), Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Black Doves), Sinead Matthews (Murder is Easy), Tom Goodman-Hill (Mr. Selfridge), Aiysha Hart (We Are Lady Parts), Darren Boyd (Trying), Tom Riley (Lost in Austen), Adam Godley (The Great), Ken Nwosu (Shardlake), and Fehinti Balogun (A Gentleman in Moscow).

Morwenna Banks (Funny Woman) is the lead writer on the series, and director Natalie Bailey (Run) helmed all eight episodes. Banks is also an executive producer along with Thompson, Herron, Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, and Tom Nash at 60Forty Films. At the moment, the show is being approached as a standalone limited series; however, given the critical and popular success of Slow Horses (and the fact that that series is quickly running out of books to adapt), it looks pretty likely we will see further stories featuring Thompson's Zoë Boehm in the future.

Down Cemetery Road will premiere on Apple TV+ with two episodes on Wednesday, October 29, with new episodes to follow every week through December 10, 2025.